Budget Breakdown: Children

Children are a blessing that comes with plenty of responsibility! When raising kids, you want them to be healthy, happy, and have opportunities to learn and grow through life! This blog will look into the statistics, investment options, and expenses associated with raising children!

The Cost of Raising Children

Let’s look at how much money it costs to raise a child from birth to age 17 and an estimated breakdown of the categories you can expect costs to be incurred.

Budgeting for Children

In addition to the expenses associated with children, various investment and savings options are available to help reduce the overall cost of raising children. Investing in your children’s education is a smart way to save for their future. On My Financial Snapshots Budgeting Tool, when you are going through your Investment & Savings options related to children, we provide the following to break these out on your budget accordingly:

• 529
• Coverdell
• Preschool
• Private School
• College
• Other Savings

This provides a way to see exactly when and where you invest and save for your child’s future!

The expense options on our Budgeting Tool provide the following child expenses:

• Activities
• Allowance
• Daycare
• Private School
• College
• Other

By separating out these expenses, you can see where consistent expenses related to your children are going. Activities like t-ball, gymnastics, and more. Educational expenses like daycare, private school, and college can also be broken out. An allowance is an option we added because that is an expense to you while being a benefit to your child!

Saving for College? The 529 and Coverdell ESA

The cost of college has dramatically increased over the past few decades, and does not look like it will slow down anytime soon. If you want to start saving for your child’s college-related expenses, check out the two most common options available. This image breakdown the benefits and questions related to these college savings options!